Beluga (16 page)

I felt a lot less good than I'd only just felt. “Dale?”

“That's the one. He said you'd bail him out.”

“He used to be a trooper.”

“Told me that, too. He told me all sorts of things. Is he a tweaker or something?”

“Might be these days. I don't know. A stone cold idiot, I can tell you that.”

“When did you last see him?”

I checked my watch. “About five hours ago.”

“Know where he got the TVs?”

“Got a pretty good idea.”

“You anywhere near Greenville?”

“I'm about to be,” I told her.

Desmond agreed to babysit. If I'd been thinking at all, I would have taken his Escalade instead of my conspicuous Ranchero. But then I had my A-5 behind the seat and my Ruger in the glove box, my .308 still on my ankle, and a deputy waiting for me in Greenville. So I wheeled straight through town on the truck route, not worried about who might see me. I was focused instead on T. Raintree at the end of the road.

It wouldn't usually pay to notice in the Delta if there was a pickup truck behind you. The place is lousy with them. It's a pickup part of the world, so the one behind me didn't register for the first twelve miles or so. But the fool at the wheel stuck to me so close, I couldn't help but notice in time.

We sped up together. We slowed down together. We changed lanes at about the same time. There were two of them in the cab. I recognized the type. Gritty lowlifes. Self-inflicted haircuts. One of them even had a phone, and he got on it while the other one drove. He couldn't seem to help but point at my Ranchero while he talked about it.

I caught up with a semi hauling chickens as we approached the town of Leland. I rode along in the left lane beside it until we'd closed hard on a turnoff to the right. I waited as long as I dared and then whipped over and turned on the side road. Those boys couldn't get around that truck, and so I bought myself some time. They'd have to go down and make a U-turn. I figured I had two minutes.

I drove into Leland proper and stopped at a Double Quick on the bayou. I parked right out front where those boys were sure to catch sight of my Ranchero. I took the Ruger with me and slipped around behind the place.

They didn't disappoint. They pulled in shortly. I could hear their muffler. That old Ford they were driving dieseled and sputtered when the driver switched it off.

I slipped down the side of the building until I could see a piece of that truck. The back quarter panel. The thing sank and wallowed as the driver climbed out of the cab. I heard the sound of one door slamming. The passenger, still in the cab, said something I couldn't make out.

The driver told him back, “All right.”

I gave him time to go inside before I came around the building. I lurked at the corner of the Double Quick. The guy in the truck was smoking a cigarette and fooling with a pistol, an old Buntline revolver, dull and rusty. He kept dropping the cylinder out and slapping it back like he'd seen in the movies. He was so happily occupied that he didn't notice me coming until I'd swung open the driver's door and slipped in under the wheel.

He told me (or maybe just told himself), “Shit!”

I reached over and grabbed his pistol. The cylinder was flopped out, so all I had to do was tilt the barrel up to dump the bullets into his lap.

“Now what?” I said.

He did the typical weaselly redneck move of trying to go everywhere all at once. It's the sort of thing that looks to the untrained eye like a spastic fit with freshets of profanity.

That boy was telling me, “Motherfucker,” and reaching around like he had something down by the door to harm me with when I took full advantage of the vintage truck they were driving.

The dashboard vinyl had long since rotted and curled, and the thing was steel underneath. So I reached my hand behind that fellow's head and slammed him forward until he bounced. One time proved enough. The air left him, and he collapsed onto the seat. I leaned him up against the door as if he were relaxing, reached over him, and pulled out the machete he'd been reaching for. It looked like he'd made it out of a mower blade and shaped it on a grinder. The edge was so dull, you couldn't have hoped to cut suet on a hot day.

I left it on the floorboard and ducked back around the building to wait for the driver. He was probably parked outside the men's room and hoping to waylay me there.

I called Desmond. I guess I was warning him, but I was venting a little, too. “I can't believe the crackers they've put on us.”

“You all right?”

“I'm damned insulted.”

“Shambrough's boys?”

“Probably, but they sure don't speak well of him.”

“Need me?”

“No. One down. Just waiting for the other one.”

“Why don't you put that thing of yours in the car shed for a week.”

“Probably should,” I told Desmond. “Think the other one's coming.”

He came out of the store and went peeking around the far end of the building. He pulled something out of his jeans waistband. I couldn't quite see what it was. When he didn't find me down there, he came back toward his truck, talking to his buddy along the way.

“Where the hell is he?” He paused to cup his hands and look in my Ranchero. He got the driver's side glass all greasy. That was another mark against him. “Wasn't in the crapper.”

His buddy just kept lounging against the door and being unconscious. “Lady at the counter said didn't nobody like him come in.”

He'd just drawn open the driver's door when I slipped up behind him. He felt me there. I had to figure he would. “You, ain't it?” he said without looking.

I'd expected to find a gun in his hand—a pepper pot or a Mauser or something—but it wasn't even anything that ambitious. Just a homemade sap instead. He'd fashioned it out of a stiff steel spring with blue electrical tape for a handle.

I told him, “I've never been so irritated with two pinheads in my life.”

He put his hands up like we were in a Western. “Got a gun on me, don't you?”

“Put your hands down.”

“I ain't making no moves.”

“Down!” I told him. He dropped them to his sides.

“He dead?” he asked of his partner.

“Not yet,” I said, and he raised his hands again. It doesn't pay to have a thing in this life to do with cracker pinheads. “Down,” I told him.

“You the one with the drop.”

“For fuck's sake. What did I say?”

He put his hands down.

“Shambrough send you?”

He decided to clam up, so I tapped him once on the back of the head. “Don't you raise those hands.”

He told me, “Ow, buddy.”

“Shambrough,” I said.

“Wasn't him. No sir.”

I had to figure he was getting literal on me.

“Did Shambrough tell somebody to send you?”

I had to tap him again.

“Yeah,” he finally told me. “Maybe.”

“You know where Lucas Shambrough lives?” I asked him.

He nodded. “Been by there,” he said.

His buddy started groaning and stirring in the truck.

“Bang him one time on the dashboard,” I said.

“I don't want to be—”

I tapped him again. He grabbed a fistful of his colleague's hair and slammed his forehead against the dash. Hard enough to lay him open and make him bleed.

“That do?”

I told him, “Yeah. Now take off your clothes.”

He didn't do anything for a moment, beyond getting cracked in the head.

“All right, all right.” He stripped out of his sweaty T-shirt. He had enough hair on his back for a throw rug.

“Pants, too,” I told him.

He grumbled but kicked out of his shoes and peeled his jeans off. Clearly his mother had never instructed him on the value of clean briefs.

“All of it,” I told him.

I got an incredulous cracker glance from over his shoulder. All I had to do was draw back, and he came out of his underpants, too.

“Throw the hat down.” It was a blue Dale Earnhardt tribute cap that I'm sure he cherished or I wouldn't have bothered to make him leave it behind.

As he stood there buck naked, an old fellow at the pump island glared over at us and spat.

“What are you going to do?” that cracker asked me.

“Get in the truck,” I told him. When he tried to gather up his clothes, I added, “Uh-uh.”

He whimpered a little and got on in.

I threw his sap up on the dash. “You go straight to Lucas Shambrough's. Don't stop anywhere and don't cover up. I'll be behind you. You knock on his door just like God made you. You'll tell him he needs a bigger fucking boat.”

“A what?”

I was tempted to hit him again, but I opted for considered self-restraint. “You heard me,” I said. “I'm watching. Go on.”

He started his truck and backed out of his spot. He cleared the gutter and gained the road with enough velocity to make sparks come off his undercarriage. I climbed into my Ranchero and pulled out the other way. He was sure to suspect every pair of headlights behind him to be mine.

I called Desmond on the way into Greenville to fill him in on what had happened.

“Keep them in if you can,” I told him. “He's turned his cretin army loose.”

Desmond said that Skeeter was watching TV in a double-breasted blazer and Larry was wearing a pale green linen suit.

“What did Gil do?” Desmond asked me.

“Suffered Pearl,” I said. “What's she up to?”

“Shawnica cleaned out her icebox. Now they're making some kind of cake.”

“Stay on, will you?”

“Yeah. I called Momma.”

“I'll get back as soon as I can.”

I'd hit downtown Greenville proper by then. The place was little short of desolate. It was just me and a pair of radio cars out in front of the station house. The officer at the desk was watching what looked like ice dancing on his puny TV.

“Officer Raintree's expecting me,” I told him.

He waved me up and went back to his set.

The pew was empty. Teddy must have been out in the wild eating dollar bills. I found Tula at her desk doing the sort of paperwork that had finally drained the life out of police work for me. There wasn't anybody else in the squad room. It was half past nine by then.

“How you?” she asked me.

I thought for a moment. I finally told her, “Grand.”

 

FIFTEEN

I dropped into the chair beside her desk, and we talked about nothing for a bit, which in this case meant we mostly didn't talk about Dale. Didn't talk about Shambrough either, of course, and I wasn't going to mention Larry's dead buddy, so instead we talked about CJ, who was sleeping at a friend's.

“Good kid,” I told Tula. “Clean.” I was thinking about how he'd scrubbed his hands in the men's room at the restaurant, but before I could explain myself, Dale bellowed from his cell.

“Hold on,” Tula said and pushed back to stand up.

“Let me.” I followed the sound of Dale's voice into a back hallway and down around a corner where the holding cages were.

Naturally, Dale had taken his shirt off. Since his cell was overlit, I couldn't help but notice he was slick and sweaty and as hairless as an egg. I caught myself wondering if Dale was suffering from the toxic side effects of mixing anabolic steroids and Nair.

“Hey,” Dale said as if we'd run into each other at the mall.

“What's up?”

Dale had to think a minute. He glanced around his cell like he was only just coming to grips with where he was.

“What are you doing in here?” Dale asked me.

“You're in,” I said. “I'm out.”

He must have believed me, because he started bellowing again.

I rattled the door bolt against the keeper like you'd shake keys at a crying infant. Dale immediately fell silent and looked at the door, at me.

“You taking something, Dale?”

“Aspirin sometimes. Doctor put me on it.”

“Anything else?”

Dale shrugged and shook his head.

“You know they caught you throwing TVs in the river, right?”

Dale considered this for a good quarter minute. “What river?” he finally asked me.

“Kalil's TVs,” I told him. “You busted into the store to get them.”

Dale snorted, amused I'd say such a thing. He shook his head and told me, “Naw.”

“Yeah,” I said. “They want to send you to Whitfield. Let you stew in there for a while.”

Even in his addled state, Dale knew what Whitfield was—the big hospital out by Jackson where the head cases ended up. Nuts went in, and dull, medicated people occasionally came out.

Dale made a sort of Scooby-Doo noise.

“You don't want that, do you?”

He watched sweat drip from his shiny bicep. “Uh-uh,” he finally told me.

“So how are we going to keep you here instead?”

Dale pointed at the floor.

“Right here,” I told him. “Until maybe tomorrow morning when you're feeling better. How are we going to make sure nobody knows to come haul you out of here?”

Dale couldn't say. He tried to, but he just shook his head and moaned a little.

“If they don't hear you, they can't find you. Might forget you're back here tonight.”

That made a kind of sense to Dale. He nodded.

“Then I'll come get you in the morning, and me and you'll go see Kalil. Figure out what to do about those TVs.”

Dale cleared up enough to say, “K-Lo.”

“Yeah. First thing. But you've got to be here when I come. How are you going to do that?”

Dale put his finger to his lips.

“That's right.” I pointed at his bunk. “Let me see if I can get these lights switched off.”

Then I stood and waited until Dale grew convinced I'd keep standing and waiting unless he went to his bunk and sat down.